(Avoca) With four starters back and a preseason top ten ranking there were a lot of high expectations surrounding the AHSTW girls basketball program this season.
The Lady Vikes have suffered a couple of losses to quality teams and are learning as they go. Head coach Jill Vanderhoof says, “I think we are still on the learning curve so far this year. Like I’ve said before, a big part of our team from last year and one that we always looked to was Kinsey Scheffler, so everyone is trying to fill that role. We are just trying to figure out as a team what are our individual roles. I think it’s taking us a little longer than we wanted it to.”
The Lady Vikes have shown flashes of being an elite team, but are still trying to reach their full potential. “We’ve had our really big moments where we’ve shined and played the way I know this team can play. One of the big things is we’ve gone from four main scorers to three. We have some other potential scorers in there they just haven’t become confident enough yet.”
Claire Harris, Claire Denning, and Kailey Jones have led the way with all averaging in double figures scoring. “All three of them have been super great leaders this year. Some are more verbal than others and some are by example, but all three of them together along with Julia Kock have a pretty strong core.”
During the holiday break they look to focus on rebounding. “I think we give up too many offensive rebounds. We have to make sure we are blocking out and making contact. We have the ability to outjump a lot of people, but with out contact in there the other team gets a lot of rebounds.”
Another area of emphasis will be on ball movement. “Making sure we move the ball quicker, faster, more accurate. Sometimes we are a little slow at ball reversal or we hold the ball too much.”
AHSTW returns to action January 5th at Underwood.
